We’ve asked not to be told the sex of FutureBaby, even though Kate’s doctors know it, having done an amniocentesis to screen for genetic defects. So far, they’ve been very good about not hinting at anything. We may have cause to reconsider this decision, though, as we get deeper into the issue of names.

There’s really nothing for exposing latent class prejudices like thinking about baby names. Not only do I cringe at names that have a hillbilly sort of ring to them, I also reflexively shy away from names that are too “Yuppie.” This is somewhat ironic, because in social class terms, I’m solidly in the group of people who use those names, but there you go.

Anyway, after some deliberation, we’ve adopted a systematic approach, with each of us going through a couple of recent lists of popular baby names and crossing off thins we find unacceptable for whatever reason (any girls’ name ending in “-elle” is out, for example, because I don’t want to stick a child with a rhyming pair of names). This has cut it down to forty-ish (total for both genders– slightly more boys’ names survived, make of that what you will), all of which look perfectly acceptable to me. Now it gets difficult.

For amusement purposes only, though, I’ll throw this open to the Internet:

What should we name FutureBaby?

One suggestion per gender per comment, please. I’m not half foolish enough to promise to use any of these, but it’s possible that somebody out there might have a great idea for a baby name that we haven’t thought of. So have at it.

This is your one and only chance for name-related commentary, by the way. When we make a final choice, it’s final, and that’s that. I’m undecided as to whether I’ll be posting the name at all, or whether I’ll use some sort of nickname to provide FutureBaby a tiny bit of distance from this blog, but regardless, you won’t be told our choice until after the birth, if ever.

Whether it’s a surprise now or in six months, does it matter? I can tell you this though, knowing the sex now makes it a lot easier to go through the whole name thing and it means you won’t getting clothes that are gender specific for the wrong one from various friends and relatives (and no matter how much you protest, they’re going to buy stuff for future baby now).

For boys, I’ve always liked Dylan, but Herr Zimmerman has sort of ruined it for me (I’m not a Bob Dylan fan…never have been…he’s written some good stuff which has been covered by other artists, but I can’t stand him as a performer).

For girls, I’ve always liked Noelle, but you’ll get the inevitable Noel jokes in December (and other bits of the year from the truly socially inept) and she’ll hate you for it.

This is only the way things are generally done in my family, but you find a grandparent or a great grandparent with a decent name, and then update it, introduce an ethniticy from a different side of the family, or change the gender as appropriate. Examples include:

I avoided difficult decisions by choosing a name that existed on both sides of the family. For a girl there is a tradition in my family that the first girl is named after the maternal grandmother, the second after the paternal grandmother.

Following up on Zine’s suggestion, try not to pick something that rhymes with something obscene. (Within reason, of course — a dirty enough mind can rhyme anything with something obscene.) Consider the unfortunate collision of the Name Game with a friend named Tucker.

I’d also avoid names with accents in them (hassle to type, and that’s if the system can even handle anything more than ASCII). Weird spellings, too, go without saying.

A lot of baby names suggest that if your last name is two syllables, you should give your kid a name with one, three or more syllables (basically, anything but two). I sort of think that’s nonsense, but I also like alliterative names (Owen Orzel?) so I might just have poor taste. Anyhow my suggestions are:

For girls, I like the names Grace or Kelly, but that could be due to the stint of old movies I’m watching now. As nice a name as Kelly is, there’s also the issue of kids calling her “Smelly Kelly” in the yard.

For boys, my name preferences I like names like Jared, Gerrard or Gareth for some reason. I think the name “Gerrard Orzel” or “Gerrard Nepveu” has a nice ring to it, but maybe that’s just me. If you’re compunding the last names, well, I’m not a big fan of compound last names because they seem so unwieldy to me, although I guess it’s more egalitarian.

I always intended to name my first daughter Sheherezade and my first son Sagan, but a) my husband objected and b) I went and had twin girls, complicating things. I guess I could have named one Shehere and the other Zade.

We used Tristan for our son. We both liked it although we tell different stories about where it came from. She says it’s after Brad Pitt’s character in “Legends of the Fall”, I say it’s after Sir Tristan of the Round Table. Either way, we like it. These are the principles we followed:

1. Unusual, but not weird (i.e. Apple, Pilot Inspektor, etc.)
2. We did factor in syllable count. The surname is two, and his middle name is 1 (Earl), so it’s 2-1-2. his sister is 3-3-2 (Alissa Julia)
3. We also made sure the sounds flowed smoothly. Not as big a deal when the surname starts with a vowel, but you want to avoid something like Austin Norman, or Ruth Thatcher. I’d suggest ending with a consonant.
4. Initials, although if the last two will be NO, there aren’t many weird words or acronyms to avoid, other than ONO or perhaps SNO.

Hope that helps. Enjoy the experience. We didn’t find out the sex until after the birth either.

We used Tristan for our son. We both liked it although we tell different stories about where it came from. She says it’s after Brad Pitt’s character in “Legends of the Fall”, I say it’s after Sir Tristan of the Round Table.

I, for one, have yet another take on that name: Wagnerian opera (Tristan und Isolde). Which must not have occurred to you, or his sister’s name would be Isolde. For similar reasons, were I to have a daughter I would not name her Ilsa, an otherwise fine name, as I happen to have the same surname as Ingrid Bergman’s character in Casablanca.

Chad: I would recommend avoiding the most popular names, since in a few years they will connote lower class. IMO you’re a few years too late to have a Madison or an Emily. The Freakonomics chapter on baby names will have some more (admittedly a few years old) data, particularly some guesses on “up-and-coming” names.

It’s probably best in your case to avoid names ending with an O sound to avoid the possibility of slurring first and last name. (This does make Nepveau problematic as FutureBaby’s middle name, but Kate didn’t get to choose her family name.) Other vowels are probably OK.

And one last thing: Promise us you won’t name FutureBaby Amcher. (Freakonomics mentions a boy by that name, which was derived from the building in which he was born: the Albany Medical Center Hospital Emergency Room.)

I don’t understand why one would choose from a list of popular names. Surely it’s better to be original? Personally I’m very lucky to have a rather unusual name for my age group. In one school I went to there was one class with five Annas and one with three in my age group, and in another there were several Therese:s. I’m not suggesting you should make something up or anything, but I would definitely avoid top lists and go for something unusual that I like the sound of.

If there is one and only one name in the intersection of the two lists, done. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Suggested also: run the selection past family members.

My parents did this, with “Jonathan” being the unique intersection. There were some interesting other 18 names on their lists which I don’t recall, other than Alaric.

For a while, when my wife was pregnant, we did not know the sex. We used various placeholders for the future name, including “Muon” and “Infinity.” One of that mentioned these once to my mother-in-law. In a later phonecall, she asked: “so how are things going with wee Finity?”

After amnio, we each made a list of 10. The unique intersection was “Andrew.”

Both sides of the family were cool with that. On the Carmichael side, St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland (and Greece, etc.). On the Post side, I have a brother Andrew, in part because of my mother’s brother being Joseph Andrew Vos.

I don’t understand why one would choose from a list of popular names. Surely it’s better to be original?

You know, most attempts at originality in naming just make me want to slap somebody. They usually seem to involve misspelling existing names– “Alexzander” or “Xzavier,” for example. That’s just dooming a kid to a lifetime of spelling the name five times in every customer service encounter, and we’re already sticking FutureBaby with “Orzel” as a surname and “Nepveu” as a likely middle name.

I might shy away from anything in the top ten names, but the top hundred or so cover pretty much the full range of things I’m likely to find acceptable,and that’s fine by me.

My advice, for whatever it’s worth, is to pick something fairly traditional, since it is likely to age better than something trendy (a really unusual name might also age well, but you don’t seem like the Moon Unit sorts).

I would also not worry about using one of the names on the “most popular” lists. We did, and had a little trepidation about it, but in practice our son rarely meets other boys with the same name.

My suggestions:

Girl – Abigail (our top pick for a girl, unused since we didn’t have one).

Boy – Benjamin (I think we liked Nathaniel better, but that gets ruled out by the rhyming rule)

I don’t know why more people don’t go the route of picking names that can be used for a boy *or* a girl. In that arena I like Robin, Kim, Chris and Jay. Jordan too, but I may be prejudiced on that one. (Though mine spells his Jordin.) I’ve known multiple members of each sex with these names.

Felicia @36 wrote: I don’t understand why one would choose from a list of popular names. Surely it’s better to be original?

As Chad says, it’s easy to take “original” too far. I’m glad I didn’t end up with a name like “Moon Unit” (who was born the same year I was). Dan’s suggestion @41 to stick with something traditional is well taken. I agree that anything in the top 10 is bad news, but there are lots of other options that don’t go too far down the “original” path. Since Chad is of Polish ancestry, the ethnic option, which would be a good way to get original for many, will add more spelling headaches (J pronounced Y, W pronounced V, gratuitously missing vowels, etc.) to what FutureBaby will have as _______ Nepveau Orzel–if male, he can thank his parents for not burdening him with a first name like Zbigniew.

We named our daughter Susan: traditional, but not very popular these days. I’ve only met one other Susan her age, though lots of Susans my age (it was very popular in the early 60s). We got it from Miracle on 34th Street, which we both liked (the original, of course). We never could come up with a boys name we both liked, but that turned out to be irrelevant.

Sophie, since Nepveau looks French, and Sophie is spelled the same way in French. If that’s not a consideration, how about Rebecca.
Martin (same reasoning as Sophie). Again, if you don’t care about other languages’ spellings, maybe Matthew.

My wife got the final say on our two kids, and they ended up as Chloe and Colin. However, the names I wanted, which are now still “available” since I lost out, were Fiona and Kadiri.

We both loved Fiona, but my wife figured Shrek has ruined that name for a generation. I argued that Shrek would not be that popular five years from now (Chloe is currently two weeks old), but it wasn’t an argument I was going to win.

Kadiri was a name of one of students while I was in the Peace Corps in West Africa. I thought it was pretty and very unique. My wife found it too ethnic. Of course, I also wanted to name him after my great uncle Cloud, which made Kadiri less wussy by comparison. Alas, again, the husband never wins these discussions.

So really you go with whatever makes Kate and the two grandmothers happy…

Just a note from an author, because I name up to 50 characters a year, which was good practice for my own wee one.

Names sound better if the first and last name have a dissimilar number of syllables, so consider monosyllabic or trisyllabic (or greater) names.

Watch those initials, rhymes, and connotations. With a last name like “Orzel,” you don’t want any pasta connotations. Your kid will get teased about his/her name at some point. Just don’t give those playground twerps good ammo.

Good luck,
TK Kenyon
Dylan Alexander Krishnan’s mommy

(Note that we did not manage to avoid the double 2-syllable rule. There were significant cultural things going on. The name had to have both Indian subcontinant roots and be Euro-passable. “Dyl” means “heart” in Sanskrit.)

My given name has been right around 30th most popular for boys for the last 35 years (though it’s risen slightly over the last 5-10 years). It’s worked really well for me; I seldom meet others with the same name, and when I do, it’s fun and exciting rather than repetitive and annoying (like I assume it must be for Davids). If I were naming a baby, I’d look for names that have been ranked lower than 20th but higher than 50th in popularity for the last 20-30 years. That gives the best chance of picking something that sounds normal but fairly unique for a schoolkid but won’t sound old-fashioned when the kid gets older (like Jennifer and Jason will in 20 years).

Benjamin, and Sophia. To show that I heard Kate, the results would be Benjamin Nepveu Orzel or Sophia Nepveu Orzel. Both names have the benefit of easy nicknames, but also can be kept as full without being ridiculous. The problem with Sophia is that it can’t be shortened to a one-syllable nickname well, but that may not be a criterion for you. I would suggest my favorite name (and my daughter’s name) but having two Kate’s in the family would probably cause unwanted confusion.

Re: #61. I apologize. It was stupid and lazy for me to have cut & pasted from a comment rather than from Kate’s fine blog or other primary source. No disrespect was intended. I try to be precise and careful with the names of high school students, as a substitute teacher, even when (as yesterday) they came stright from their probation officer’s meeting.

Since we had in vitro mixed set twins we had double the work and no surprise. This allowed ample time to come up with appropriate monikers, though due to a slightly premature arrival time (certainly not my tendency to procrastinate) the still arrived home as “Baby Boy A” and “Baby Girl B” and now have two page birth certificates.
Consider a multitude of names. First, I have two middle names and thought that my children should have two as well. This provides an opportunity for a child to call themselves different things at different times of their lives. Four or (or more) names offers the opportunity for a name to become more poetic (my daughter’s full name rolls off the tongue), allows inclusion of a family names and provides a platform for eccentricity. One of my son’s middle names is “bandicoot”, because my wife’s water broke while playing crash bandicoot on a borrowed playstation. Eccentricity is highly undervalued in modern American society and as a wise man once said “a riot is an ugly thing an it’s about time we had one”.
I am also considering having and amendment ceremony as my kids come of age, where they pick a name and add it to their title (thus generating a 3 page birth certificate). Should we have some say in what other call us above and beyond “don’t call me Eddy”. For uber nerd status and extra point s one could choose names that form an appropriate acronym from their initials. Have fun.

You could always come up with some arbitrary selections, like “must not have the letters J, K, W, X, or Z” (so that it is generically pronounceable in a variety of languages) and “must be able to be written using elemental symbols” (so that it is sufficiently yet subtly dorky enough). Then, you can let a perl script decide for you! Another way to arbitrarily whittle down the list is to only allow names which can’t be turned into nicknames so that FutureBaby will actually wind up being called by their name (like Chad, to pick a random example).

I think using some sort of nickname to give the child distance from the blog, and protect the child’s google history, is a good idea.

If a boy, keep in mind that some male names are so common it’s like not having a name at all, as John Orzel, for instance, would probably just be called Orzel all his life.

As someone with a difficult name myself, I think children will get over them, especially if there is a good reason/story behind it. But do consider that the child will live in a print culture—a name that doesn’t look roughly like it is pronounced, or doesn’t accurately connote gender, will have to be dealt with in a world where the child will meet many people over email/web/whatever, not in person.

Books

You've read the blog, now try the books:

Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist will be published in December 2014 by Basic Books. "This fun, diverse, and accessible look at how science works will convert even the biggest science phobe." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "In writing that is welcoming but not overly bouncy, persuasive in a careful way but also enticing, Orzel reveals the “process of looking at the world, figuring out how things work, testing that knowledge, and sharing it with others.”...With an easy hand, Orzel ties together card games with communicating in the laboratory; playing sports and learning how to test and refine; the details of some hard science—Rutherford’s gold foil, Cavendish’s lamps and magnets—and entertaining stories that disclose the process that leads from observation to colorful narrative." --Kirkus ReviewsGoogle+

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog is published by Basic Books. "“Unlike quantum physics, which remains bizarre even to experts, much of relativity makes sense. Thus, Einstein’s special relativity merely states that the laws of physics and the speed of light are identical for all observers in smooth motion. This sounds trivial but leads to weird if delightfully comprehensible phenomena, provided someone like Orzel delivers a clear explanation of why.” --Kirkus Reviews "Bravo to both man and dog." The New York Times.

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is published by Scribner. "It's hard to imagine a better way for the mathematically and scientifically challenged, in particular, to grasp basic quantum physics." -- Booklist "Chad Orzel's How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is an absolutely delightful book on many axes: first, its subject matter, quantum physics, is arguably the most mind-bending scientific subject we have; second, the device of the book -- a quantum physicist, Orzel, explains quantum physics to Emmy, his cheeky German shepherd -- is a hoot, and has the singular advantage of making the mind-bending a little less traumatic when the going gets tough (quantum physics has a certain irreducible complexity that precludes an easy understanding of its implications); finally, third, it is extremely well-written, combining a scientist's rigor and accuracy with a natural raconteur's storytelling skill." -- BoingBoing